Entries in Anish Giri
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The fourth round of the Tal Memorial was very exciting, with three decisive games out of five - and it could have been five out of five. Anish Giri defeated Peter Svidler with Black to take sole possession of first with 3.5/4. He is half a point ahead of Ian Nepomniachtchi, who drew with Levon Aronian. For the most part this was a correct result, except for an Aronian blunder on move 15 that went unpunished.

The other draw was a marathon battle between Evgeny Tomashevsky and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov. Early on Mamedyarov had an edge, but later Tomashevsky wasn't just better; he was winning. He missed his chances, and in the end Mamedyarov scraped out a draw.

Boris Gelfand did his best to try to eke out a draw against Li Chao, hoping to create a fortress against Li's superior forces, but he couldn't do it. Finally, Vladimir Kramnik bounced back from his loss in round 3 with a good win over his longtime rival Viswanathan Anand. He was pressing throughout the first time control, but without ever being too close to a win. In the second time control, however, his pressure bore fruit. Kramnik did make one subsequent mistake, but Anand failed to seize his chance and lost several moves later.

The games, with comments, are here, and here are the round 5 pairings:

There's now a three-way tie for first after two rounds of the Tal Memorial. Three games were drawn - two post-haste (Svidler-Nepomniachtchi and Tomashevsky-Aronian) while the third (Kramnik-Li Chao) always seemed headed for the draw that was eventually achieved.

The other two games were impressive achievements by the victors. Anish Giri defeated Boris Gelfand with the black pieces in good style. Giri's active play in the center involved a pawn sac, and it would seem that he did a better job of evaluating the sharp position that resulted than did his opponent. 28...g5 was a nice move, and Giri finished the game with an impressive attack, helped along by Gelfand's plausible error on move 34 in time trouble.

Viswanathan Anand also won with an impressive attack, but in an endgame. Mamedyarov went for an interesting piece sac in a Closed Ruy, and while his compensation may have been enough it required accurate play to remain that way. His decision to trade queens on move 29 surprised Anand, and the computer doesn't like it either: Black's compensation rested as much on his attacking chances as on the pawns he had for the piece, and once the queens came off it was White who took over the initiative. The final sequence, beginning with, say, 47.Rb6, was very nice. Mamedyarov wasn't too far away from escaping with a draw, but some clever tactics combining various possible knight forks with threats against Black's king secured the win for the former world champion.

There were two decisive results in the antepenultimate round of the Vugar Gashimov memorial tournament in Shamkir, and there should have been three or even four.

There was only one non-game in the round, and surprisingly it wasn't the all-Azeri match between Shakhriyar Mamedyarov and Eltaj Safarli. Why exactly this was a real game while all of the other intra-national games featuring the home players were short, effortless draws is a mystery to me, but Mamedyarov came to play. Unfortunately for Safarli, he played a very poor game and was in trouble after just 12 moves. Mamedyarov dominated for a long time, but his knight misadventure 32.Nc6 and 33.Nd8 gave Safarli a couple of chances to save the game. Perhaps due to time pressure, he didn't succeed, and Mamedyarov was winning easily by the end of the time control.

The one short draw was instead between Sergey Karjakin and Teimour Radjabov, and there wasn't much to see there. The other two draws were full of life, however, and that includes the game between Fabiano Caruana and Anish Giri. Caruana entered the round half a point ahead, and with a win the tournament would have been on ice. The players seemed to be prepared almost to move 30, but then the adventures started. Giri's foolhardy 31st move exposed his king to grave danger, and he was very fortunate that Caruana didn't venture Qf7 on either move 35 or 37. (Time pressure?) Luckily for Giri, Caruana allowed a threefold repetition, and the question of first place remains open.

The other draw was less significant for the top places, but was an interesting battle all the same. Pentala Harikrishna managed to draw with Rauf Mamedov, but despite having the white pieces he was in trouble for a long time and probably lost at one or two moments.

Finally, in the battle of the tailenders Pavel Eljanov escaped the cellar by defeating Hou Yifan, who is now in last place half a point behind Eljanov and Safarli. Eljanov played very aggressively and it paid off, and the game finished with an attractive, study-like win.

Starting from round 2 the event heated up and decisive results have abounded. Even many of the draws have been interesting – at least when they haven’t involved all-Azeri pairings.

In round 2, Hou Yifan had an advantage against Eltaj Safarli on the white side of a Winawer French, but didn’t manage to convert. On the other hand, the top player most associated with draws these days, Anish Giri, managed to defeat Sergey Karjakin. In fact, nothing much was happening in their game until Karjakin’s 33…Qg4 followed by 34…Rhe8, walking himself into a tactical disaster. After 35.f5! gxf5 36.Nf2 Qg6 37.exf5 the best Black could do was enter an ending with two rooks against a queen, and with as many weak pawns as Karjakin had the result was a foregone conclusion. Pavel Eljanov has had some great results over the past year, but this tournament doesn’t look like it’s going to be one of them. Fabiano Caruana was pressing early on with Black, combining queenside play (with his passed a-pawn and later with a rook on the b-file) with control of the a8-h1 diagonal and penetration by his queen on the kingside. Eljanov needn’t have lost, but as often happens under sustained pressure the defender eventually lets something slip – especially in time trouble. Eljanov’s just before the time control allowed Caruana’s heavy pieces to penetrate to the first rank, and the game ended several moves later. Rauf Mamedov and Teimour Radjabov went through the motions to draw in 20 moves. Finally, Pentala Harikrishna won very easily against Shakhriyar Mamedyarov. Harikrishna took the space that Mamedyarov offered, used it to penetrate Black’s porous position, and soon material fell.

In round 3 Mamedyarov bounced back with a win over Eljanov. The game was more or less equal until the last move of the time control, 40…Rd7?! (though perhaps Eljanov’s 36…d5 was a risky choice that put him in a situation where accuracy was required) Instead 40…Rd6 would have maintained equality. After this inaccurate move Mamedyarov engineered a nice kingside breakthrough and won with a passed h-pawn. Caruana cruised to a second straight win, defeating Hou Yifan on the white side of an Open Ruy. In her world championship match against Mariya Muzychuk Hou faced the Open Ruy several time; perhaps as a result of her work on the opening in that match she has decided to give it a try here. Caruana produced the first novelty, however, and quickly obtained an advantage. Things weren’t too bad for the women’s champion until 27…h5, whereupon her position collapsed. Radjabov-Giri looked like it could have been an all-Azeri battle (i.e. a very easy draw) – which was the case in Safarli – Mamedov. Karjakin – Harikrishna was another story. Like Mamedyarov, Karjakin recovered from his loss in round 2 with a win to get back to 50%, dragging Harikrishna back down to the same score. Harikrishna’s 12…h6 was provocative, and Karjakin accepted the provocation with 13.Bxh6. Karjakin’s assessment was better than his opponent, and after a series of exchanges White’s two rooks and six pawns proved stronger than Black’s rook, bishop, knight, and three pawns. Converting the advantage wasn’t easy, but Karjakin did it.

Round 4 saw perhaps the first outright blunder of the event, Harikrishna’s 24…Qxd4 against Giri. His position was uncomfortable before that, but it was dead lost afterwards, and he resigned three moves later. Radjabov and Safarli did the patriotic thing and draw speedily; at least the game was entertaining for a while. Caruana stayed half a point ahead of Giri by winning his third game in a row, this time with Black against Mamedov. Mamedov’s hyper-aggressive opening idea fizzled, and although he enjoyed the nominal material advantage of rook and two pawns against two bishops, the power of the bishop pair is often supreme in such cases. Eventually it proved so in this game as well, helped along by Mamedyarov’s erroneous 30.Re7+ and some further mistakes to boot. It was not a great game by Caruana, but with the win he maintained his lead and leapfrogged Vladimir Kramnik into second place in the Live Ratings. The last two games, Hou Yifan-Mamedyarov and Eljanov-Karjakin, were both good fighting draws.

In round 5, only one game was drawn (Mamedyarov-Mamedov – the usual story); in the remaining games it was mostly the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. Hou Yifan went for another Open Ruy against Karjakin (though a different line), and while she may have won the theoretical battle (25…d3 seems a little better for Black) she lost the war, getting ground down in an ending. Caruana won his fourth game in a row, this time at Radjabov’s expense. In a Rossolimo with opposite-sides castling White’s attack was much faster than Black’s after Black failed to play 16…b4 and White took advantage with 17.b4! Caruana misplayed the position near the end and gave Radjabov a chance to keep fighting, but after 33…Bf5? White finished in style with 34.e6! Rxg4 35.exf7 Rxd4 36.Ne8! Giri also won again, staying just half a point behind Caruana. Safarli – Giri’s victim – may have expected that Black’s pawn duo on e4 and f5 was bound to collapse, but it remained long enough to give Giri a winning attack. Finally, Harikrishna got back to 50% by giving Eljanov his third defeat of the tournament. White’s kingside attack was very dangerous but only enough for equality until 26…exd4. After a forced sequence White wound up with a queen and four pawns against two rooks and four pawns, but White had connected passers while Black’s pawns were all weak. Once the time control was reached White had queen and three pawns vs. the two rooks and a single pawn, and with no counterplay available to Black he decided to call it a day.

All the decisive games in the tournament up to now are here, with my comments.

Tuesday is a rest day, and on Wednesday the round 6 pairings are as follows:

The current trend of starting super-tournaments with blitz events used to determine the pairings is a very good one, and I hope it sticks around. It makes merit rather than luck the basis of color distribution, and it's also a treat for the spectators. (It probably helps the players warm up a bit too.)

On Monday, the Norway Chess super-tournament had their blitz event, and Magnus Carlsen was a runaway train up until the final round. He started with 7.5/8, only giving up a draw to bottom seed and (co-) tailender Nils Grandelius, of all people. He defeated Vladimir Kramnik, Levon Aronian, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and all the other stars before suffering a defeat to his personal kryptonite, Anish Giri. Giri lost to Vachier-Lagrave along the way, but was otherwise undefeated and took clear second with 6.5/9. Vachier-Lagrave and Kramnik tied for third-fourth. The former lost to Carlsen and to Veselin Topalov, while Kramnik's only loss was to Carlsen (and he beat Topalov). Finally, Aronian's 50% score was good enough for fifth, making him the last player to be guaranteed an extra game with the white pieces. (Below him, Pentala Harikrishna finished with 4 points, Topalov with 3, Grandelius, Li Chao, and Pavel Eljanov with 2.5.)

The main event in Zurich starts today, Saturday, but before that the organizers had the players compete in a blitz tournament. This was entertaining for the spectators (both those on scene, including Anatoly Karpov and Viktor Korchnoi[!], and the rest of us watching on the internet), of course, and it had the additional purpose of determining the pairings. Placement determined one's pairing number, and so the top three players will all have an extra game with the white pieces in the main event.

Hikaru Nakamura won his first three games in this six-player round-robin before Alexei Shirov (barely) pulled out a draw in round 4 and Viswanathan Anand beat him in the final round. Those three finished with plus scores, and thus get the extra white game in the rapid round robin to follow. Nakamura (obviously) finished with 3.5/5, while both Anand and Shirov wound up with 3 (Anand took second on tiebreak). Vladimir Kramnik was next with 2.5, Levon Aronian scored only two points (but defeated Anand in their game), while Anish Giri brought up the rear with a winless 1/5.

Because it's a rapid event (G/40' + 10"/move), there will be two games per day. (At least for the first two days; on day 3 there will be a rapid game followed by another blitz round-robin. Strange, but entertaining.) Here are the pairings for rounds 1 and 2; round 1 starts at 3 p.m. local time in Zurich (= 9 a.m. ET).

Round 1:

Shirov - Kramnik

Nakamura - Giri

Anand - Aronian

Round 2:

Kramnik - Aronian

Giri - Anand

Shirov - Nakamura

There's an added bonus: Boris Gelfand and Alexander Morozevich will concurrently play a two-game match with the same time control.

Hopefully the quality of the games will be high; whether it is or not, however, they're sure to be entertaining.

The second edition of the Qatar Masters, the strongest open tournament of the year (and probably ever) starts tomorrow - Sunday - and features a fantastically strong lineup. There are 18 players rated over 2700, including Magnus Carlsen, Vladimir Kramnik, Anish Giri, Wesley So, Sergey Karjakin and, skipping down several spots, the Chinese super-prodigy Wei Yi. The action begins at 3 p.m. local time (=7 a.m. ET).

Seeing as it's the holiday season, however, I'm going to take a little vacation from blogging until the new year, and will enjoy the tournament purely as a fan, just like the rest of you. It's not impossible that I'll jump on here between now and 2016 (as a heads-up for my next column, for instance), but that aside, this might be it until next year. So Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and best wishes for a blessed 2016!

Having concluded my reporting on the proceedings, it's time to vent some spleen. Before doing so, it's important to note that nothing I will now say is intended to blame Magnus Carlsen or to deny that he was a deserving winner of the London Chess Classic. (I certainly don't think he's the deserving winner of the Tour, but again, that's not his fault.)

I've already noted the unfairness of the playoff procedure which forced Anish Giri and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave to engage each other for around three or four hours (including breaks between games) while Carlsen could rest, nap and/or prepare for his tired challenger. For that matter, I don't understand why it should have been a two-stage event. Using the Sonneborn-Berger tiebreak makes sense in a Swiss system event, where players face different opponents; in a round-robin it seems to me without value. Fine, player A beat player C while player B beat player D, where A and C finished in a tie while C outscored D by half a point. Why not criticize A for his relative incompetence in failing to beat D? And what if A beat C because C was fighting for first place and had to take undue risks? Also, maybe A had White against C while B had Black against both C and D. Why is A's performance more noteworthy? Still further: suppose A is higher-rated than B. Then B had a higher TPR than A; again, why isn't that the first criterion? It has the further benefit of not making A's and B's tiebreakers dependent on how C and D perform against players E through J.

So those are two ways - one more particular, one more general - in which Carlsen was (greatly) benefited and Giri and Vachier-Lagrave were harmed by the tiebreak system in the London Chess Classic. Next, let's recap the way Giri and MVL were punished by the Grand Chess Tour's tiebreak system in the Sinquefield Cup while Carlsen was rewarded. That tournament was won by Levon Aronian, and after that there was a four-way tie for second between Carlsen, Hikaru Nakamura, Vachier-Lagrave and Giri (in tiebreak order). Rather than splitting the points for second through fifth places, the points were allocated as if each player had outscored those below him. As a result Carlsen obtained 10 Tour points, Nakamura 8, Vachier-Lagrave 7 and Giri only 6. As was widely noted at the time, the upshot was that Giri, who was undefeated and +3 in the first two Tour events (the first event was the Norway Chess tournament back in May), was behind Carlsen, whose cumulative score was -1. What a crock.

Finally, Vachier-Lagrave got ripped off in his own special way by the Tour and its absurd policies. The London Chess Classic wasn't just important in its own right or even in its own right and for its implications for this year's Tour; it also had implications for next year's Tour invitees. So, you may ask, who gets to play in next year's Tour? The answer is that the top three finishers from this year's Tour, plus the next six players based on the average of their monthly ratings from February through December of this year, with their live post-tournament rating counting as another "month" to average. (As this year, so too next year will include a tenth wildcard spot for each tournament, decided by the organizers.) They are:

Magnus Carlsen

Anish Giri

Levon Aronian

Vladimir Kramnik

Hikaru Nakamura

Fabiano Caruana

Viswanathan Anand

Veselin Topalov

Wesley So

The first three were Tour qualifiers, the last six made it by rating. Carlsen finished with 26 Tour points, Giri with 23, and Aronian with 22. Vachier-Lagrave finished with 21 points, and before you say "hard luck, he just had to win rather than take second", here's some information for you: he took third. That's right: he beat Giri in the playoff and nevertheless took third in the tournament, behind him. (Incidentally, it wouldn't have mattered to Giri if their places were reversed, because Giri still would have qualified by rating, bumping Wesley So off the list.) So Vachier-Lagrave finished tied or better with Carlsen in all three tournaments (not counting the playoff), but somehow finished fourth and off of the 2016 Tour.

There's enough steer manure here to fertilize a small country. FIDE has been guilty of incompetent and unfair practices over the years, but I don't think they've ever managed to pack so many brain-dead and unjust policies within such a small space in their entire history, and that's really saying something. Well done, Grand Chess Tour. Well done.

And then there were three. A fair playoff would have been something like a double round-robin with Magnus Carlsen, Anish Giri and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, but very little about the organization of the Grand Chess Tour has had much to do with fairness. Therefore Carlsen got to sit back, relax and prepare a little while (and be guaranteed at least second place in the London Chess Classic) Giri and Vachier-Lagrave bashed heads over a three hour period for the right to play him. The unfairness, of course, isn't because it was Carlsen, who had the privilege of waiting because of his better Sonneborn-Berger score; it would have been an absurd privilege no matter who was the recipient.

Giri went undefeated in all three events of the Tour, a pretty remarkable performance, and his solid play continued in the first of the two rapid games in the playoff. Giri essayed the Berlin (the semi-official opening of the tournament) and won a remarkably clean game (for a rapid time control), blockading White's kingside majority and convincingly demonstrating the superiority of his light-squared bishop to MVL's knight.

All Giri needed was to draw with the white pieces, and unfortunately for him that's how he played in game 2. There are three classic psychological mistakes practically everyone makes at some point in their lives, and some people never seem to learn the lesson: (1) rushing in the opponent's time trouble; (2) assuming a winning position will automatically result in a win; (3) playing for a draw when one needs/wants a draw. Giri committed the third error, in spades. Rather than playing the position and making the best moves, Giri repeatedly called off the dogs whenever he could grab an advantage, trying cynically to make the position dull and achieve a draw. Vachier-Lagrave kept scrapping, never allowing the position to completely resolve itself, and Giri's situation grew worse and worse. In the end, the game was decided by time trouble, with the evaluation fluctuating between a serious advantage for MVL and a draw for Giri. Up until the last move, Giri could have survived - 59.Rh7 is still a draw, but 59.Rh8?? blundered a piece to the elementary 59...Rxe5. (Of course, it's elementary when one isn't running out of time, exhausted by a long day at the end of a tough tournament and in a press-filled situation.)

That forced Armaggedon, and Vachier-Lagrave took the option to have Black in the last game. (White gets six minutes, Black 5 + draw odds, with no increments until after move 60, when the players get three seconds per move.) The level of play wasn't very high in this game, with both players surely exhausted by then, but MVL remained in control most of the way and won after Giri declined a charity repetition in a dead lost position.

The games, with my comments are here; stay tuned for a post on the Carlsen vs. Vachier-Lagrave final.

The race for tournament victory at the London Chess Classic, and overall victory in the Grand Chess Tour, remains very much up in the air with a round to go. Coming into the round Maxime Vachier-Lagrave was the sole leader, half a point ahead of four players. A precarious lead, and it didn't survive the round as Anish Giri managed to catch him by defeating Hikaru Nakamura. Nakamura was doing well in the first half of the game, but after 24...bxc3 Giri obtained an advantage that he steadily increased with excellent play straight through the end of the game.

MVL had White against Michael Adams, but the unbreakable Englishman (eight draws!) held without any serious difficulties. The other three games were drawn as well, with adventures in every case. Levon Aronian was first clearly worse with Black against Alexander Grischuk, and then clearly better with a big time advantage to boot. Unfortunately for Aronian, he got careless in that nearly ideal situation, and his 35...hxg3?(?) allowed 36.Nh6+! with equality and, after 36...gxh6, an immediate draw by perpetual.

Fabiano Caruana found an interesting new idea for White against Viswanathan Anand's pet line 10...Bd6 in the Open Catalan, and when Anand blinked White obtained a slight but enduring edge. Anand hasn't played very well the past few rounds, but today he was his usual outstanding self, defending very well and achieving a draw by elegant means.

Finally, the game between Veselin Topalov and Magnus Carlsen was most curious and led to talk of changing the rules of chess! Carlsen played a most Carlsen-like game, and outplayed Topalov to reach an advantageous ending with each side having a rook, a knight and three kingside pawns. After Topalov's 39th move the pawns were fixed, with Carlsen enjoying the winning chances thanks to White's weak pawn on e5. Black was soon able to win the e-pawn at his leisure, but at the cost of trading the knights, which would result in an easily drawn R+3 vs. R+2 ending. So Carlsen had to try to immobilize and discoordinate White's pieces, create a second weakness and activate his own king. He was achieving all of those goals, but alas - there was a problem: the 50-move rule! The game was north of move 80, and while Carlsen was making progress Topalov's progress towards an automatic draw on move 89 was even speedier. Carlsen was compelled on move 84 to cash in, winning the e-pawn while allowing a trade of knights, and although White's king was slightly cut off from his pawns there was no way for Black to exploit it, and the game was drawn. (A fine defensive effort by Topalov, it should be noted, especially so given his otherwise disastrous play in the tournament.)

Should the 50-move rule be modified for cases like this? It's hard to see how it could reasonably be done. The exceptions are very rare and practically impossible to specify in advance. The only even remotely plausible mechanism that comes to mind is to have a strong arbiter or a players' committee make a determination, but there are numerous problems with such an idea, including the introduction of an inappropriately high degree of subjectivity in what is as close as possible to an objective, merit-based game or sport.

Anyway, the games (with my notes) are here, and these are the pairings for tomorrow's final round: